The rapidly increasing interconnectedness of the world brought on by the expansion of globalization calls for a redefinition of the traditional notion of higher education. As such, many Canadian educators, government officials, and students alike are insisting on the importance of internationalizing higher education through intercultural exchanges and studying abroad, in the hopes that current and future generations of Canadians will acquire a global perspective and become citizens of the world (Advisory Panel on Canada’s International Education Strategy, 2012). Yet in order to ensure that students are gaining the most from their international experience, it is important to understand the impact that studying abroad can have, both in the short and long term. While many past studies have focused on the short-term, or the actual time spent abroad and subsequent impacts, few have examined the exchange student’s re-entry into their society of origin and subsequent long-term effects, such as personal developments that surface during repatriation.
In this qualitative study, eight undergraduate students from the University of Montreal were interviewed regarding how they lived their reintegration into Montreal society after returning home post studying abroad. While academics that have broached the subject in the past tended to view repatriation as a static series of events, our data analysis showed a similar pattern that surfaced in all respondents’ testimonials allowing us to henceforth recognize this repatriation as an interconnected three-step process. By borrowing from Kim’s theory of Intercultural Personhood (2008), we are now able to define these three distinct phases as stress, adaptation, and growth; all of which not only help to better understand the difficulties students face during their process of reintegration but also facilitate the identification of possible identity transformations that surface upon re-entry and how these transformations impact the repatriation process.